


Road Kill

by Airelle



Series: Bodie's Cat [1]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1694621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airelle/pseuds/Airelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodie has a cat. Or has he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road Kill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [franciskerst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/franciskerst/gifts).



> Written January 2014

If someone had asked me, I would have said that dying was going to be a very unpleasant experience.  
  
In fact, it wasn’t. It was barely an experience at all. I felt a hard push, as if someone had propelled me across the road with a solid kick to my backside – which has happened to me more than once. Then I got back on my four legs, not even shaken. I looked around and there he was: the human who’d been giving me a bowl of food on his doorstep for the last four or five days. He’d just got out of his car, and he had a stricken look on his handsome face (handsome for a human, I guess. For me, well, he wasn’t of much interest. Too tall, not enough fur, although the one he did have on his head was black and luscious, the way I like it.)  
  
My human turned to his companion, who was also extracting himself from the car, a grimace twisting his craggy face. This one was older, less pretty than my human, and he had a definite limp.

“Sir, I… I don’t know how it happened! I killed the little fellow! I…”  
  
“Och, Bodie, you had no chance to avoid him. He ran in front of your car at such speed!”  
  
“I’d been feeding him for the last few days. And now, look at what I’ve done… The least I can do is give him a decent funeral…”  
  
My human bent down and picked up a little bundle of fur from the ground. Funny, this one really looked like me: smallish, black and white, but motionless. I do know what I look like, having peered into puddles on occasion. When we’re very young, we think those menacing creatures are potential enemies, but, like all kittens, I quickly learned that they were only reflections of ourselves, doing exactly the same thing as we did, and therefore to be dismissed.  
  
But, even then, I did not understand. I was even starting to believe my human didn’t like me anymore, because when I followed him and the older bloke inside, he didn’t go to fetch the food. Instead, I saw him push the door to his little back garden and deposit the bundle on the ground, saying:  
  
“I’ll bury him later, sir. I… I took a liking to him, you know. He seemed so grateful for a bit of food, and he was… nice. Used to purr and rub up against me. Yes, I do know he was just marking his territory, but… well. I liked him. And he never once used his claws on me.”  
  
To my surprise, I saw he had gone very white and had a really stricken look in his dark blue eyes. The older man then put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“I don’t know what to tell you, Bodie. Life isn’t kind for stray cats. At least, you made it a bit less difficult for him during his last days on Earth…”  
  
“I should have taken him inside. But he didn’t seem to want to stay, and with the hours I keep…”  
  
He seemed so distraught that I wanted to reassure him that I was here and, well, alive. So I went up to him to rub myself on his legs, as we do, not only to mark our territory, but because we know cat contact is good for humans, and soothing. After all, we have to protect our investments, don’t we?  
  
That’s when I understood: I went right through his leg.  
  
But I saw my human twitch a bit.  
  
“What is it, Bodie?”  
  
“Dunno, sir. It almost felt as if… Oh, it’s silly.”  
  
“As if…?”  
  
“As if he was suddenly there and doing his usual routine of snaking around my legs…”  
  
 _Perceptive_ , I thought. _I am here, and I’m doing precisely that. But you’re normally not supposed to feel it when it’s a ghost doing it._  
  
Now, you’re going to ask me, how did I suddenly know I was a ghost, and all those other things about my new condition? It seems that, when you die, you understand much more than you did in life. Well, obviously, not immediately, and not very quickly. But when it comes to you, lots of things become clearer.  
  
As it was becoming clear to me now that my human was indeed very sad, and that the only one who could help him was the sandy-haired bloke currently patting his arm, as, in my ghostly state, there was precious little I could do. And I could feel something else, coming from this older man. He was sad too, not because of me, because he’d never known lovable little me, but because of my human’s sadness.  
  
The sandy-haired bloke – was “Sir” his name? – went to a cupboard, opened it and took out two glasses and a bottle.  
  
“Here, Bodie, sit down, and we’ll drink to your cat, that his soul may travel safely to whatever afterlife he’s heading for.”  
  
Am I heading somewhere? I didn’t know that. For now, I was content to be here and try and comfort my human for having accidentally offed me.  
  
“D’you really believe in souls, sir?” Bodie asked. “I’m not sure I do. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. You get one life, and that’s it. When you’re gone, you’re gone.”  
  
 _Except that, when you’re gone, you’re still there,_ I thought.  
  
And I jumped on his lap. Silly me.  
  
Went straight through his well-muscled thighs and found myself on the floor. But why didn’t I sink though the ground, too? How does that work? Come to think of it, why wasn’t I seeing a lot of other ghosts around me? I mean, that mouse I killed and ate only an hour ago, where was he?  
  
Oh. Right there. Seems you have to _think_ about another ghost to see it. Well, good. Would be too crowded if it worked differently.  
  
I stopped thinking about the mouse and he obligingly faded back into nothingness.  
  
But this left me with my dilemma: how to make my human feel better?  
  
As he’d practically _felt_ my rubbing on his legs, I decided that, maybe, if I were to purr as near to him as I could, that would do the trick.  
  
I stretched up and _willed_ the sofa to become solid for me. Don’t ask me how it works: I don’t know. Apparently, we can only do this with inanimate objects, not with living beings. Then I jumped on the sofa’s arm, very close to Bodie’s ear, and I started purring.  
  
Surprisingly, I saw my human look around him, as if puzzled.  
  
“Bodie?” Sir said.  
  
“I must be going crazy! Just now, I thought I heard him purr in my ear. What next, am I going to see his ghost?”  
  
 _I don’t think so,_ I thought, though I didn’t know how I knew this.  
  
“Ah, Bodie, you’ve had a shock, laddie. I know you don’t like killing innocents. Here, drink this. It will help.”  
  
Bodie raised the glass. “To my little unnamed friend. May he rest in peace.” Then he drank.  
  
Unnamed? Of course I wasn’t unnamed! Like all kittens, I’d been given a cat-name by my mother, as soon as my eyes opened. This cat-name is our real name, the one we use all our life. Humans give us names, too, because, well, they don’t speak our language, and even if they understood it, they wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. So we indulge them, and answer to whatever name they give us.  
  
Sometimes.  
  
When it suits us.  
  
Then I saw something really, really astonishing. My big human friend’s eyes misted, and a lone tear escaped from one of them. And Sir gathered him in his arms and made little soothing sounds, not unlike the ones my mother made when I was a very small kitten and felt afraid or lonely when she came back from one of her forays for food.  
  
“Sir, my human friend said sheepishly, I really don’t know what… what came over me. I… I am… so sorry to… bother you…”  
  
“You’re not bothering me, my lad, you’re just showing you’re human. Don’t be ashamed.”  
  
Sir and Bodie remained a long time in each other’s arms, Bodie slowly calming down. Sir kept stroking his hair and back and murmuring soft words in his ear. His _other_ ear, the one I wasn’t purring into. So I like to think that I did help.  
  
I don’t know how it happened, or why, but later, after they’d buried my corpse (I really hate having to think about that, but, well, I have to face facts…), Bodie and Sir were together in my human’s bed, kissing and making soft noises, although those were _very_ unlike the ones my mother made when she wanted to reassure me after she came back from one of her forays…  
  
And, later on during the night, I learned that Sir’s name was, in fact, George.

The end


End file.
